After a not-so-short retrospective, let’s look at the future/pending projects in the pipeline:

KTLO stands for “Keep The Lights On” -- we use that in the software industry to encompass all the invisible yet essential tasks that maintain systems in operations. I was not in the habit of listing these tasks before: all the layout repairs to turnouts or dead spots, or all the time dealing with automation engines that stop working -- because I can’t predict these, obviously, and when they happen they take precedence over whatever pending task I’m working on anyway.

However it turns out that these tasks account for at least half of my time, if not more. A lot of my planning involves having contingencies so that the layout automation is running 5 days a week, all year long.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated my public project list… 2021 in fact as well as a follow up in June 2021!

So it’s time to look back at what has been accomplished and what the future/pending projects are in the pipeline.

First, it’s important to remember that the goal of such a project list is just to give an overall direction and priorities. As such it needs to be kept dynamic. And indeed since 2021, a lot of work has been done that was never anticipated -- a few planned things got done, and a few new projects were added and completed:

Let’s dig in the details of what got accomplished -- this is a mix of “planned projects” and, unsurprisingly, a lot of on-the-spot maintenance that takes precedence over projects:

UP 8736 is back on the Mainline Passenger Automation:

Both Athearn engines 8749 and 8736 have been the workhorse of the automation from 2019 up to 2022. Towards the end, they were still working however my notes indicated some speakers “plopping” sounds and the engines being a bit more sluggish. Originally the Walthers UP engines were supposed to replace them, but I had only problem after problem with the Walthers roster -- it took me a year and a half to get the Walthers engine working correctly. In 2024 I was finally able to use them in automation, and yet at the end of the year the Walthers engines already had mechanical problems cropping up. I’ve been very disappointed by all the brand new Walthers engines I’ve used recently.

Recently the automation has been challenging when running in reverse down from the mountain:

Happy New Year 2025 from the Randall Museum Model Railroad team.

The Passenger Train stopped working on the Mainline automation yesterday. The train was nowhere to be found on the remote cameras, yet JMRI detected the train’s presence on block B360 -- that’s the curve just before reaching Summit on the mountain.

Since I wasn’t in a position to go to the museum to investigate, I remotely updated the automation script over SSH to disable the Passenger train and only run the Freight train on the automation.

When I got there today, I found this:

That’s a new one as I had never seen a derailment at that spot before.

From there, every effort at fixing the situation pretty much went wrong one way or another.

I’ve just installed “Ambiance” on the layout, a LED fairy light string which is controlled by the train automation computer:

I’ve been working on that little project for a while. It is built around an ESP32 embedded controller running a custom software. The automation computer can send configurable light patterns and animation to the controller, which in turns controls the lights.

The lights will vary depending on the season. For example right now I have a simple green/red pattern, whilst around Halloween I will have a yellow/orange pattern:

SP X1225 just arrived in town, with a selection of adequately themed freight cars:

The engine and the caboose were custom painted by Steve B. Thank you for your contribution!

I was told yesterday that the turnouts in Napa Yard were inoperative. Now, that’s not a huge shock since last week I worked on the Richmond Panel and disconnected a couple unused DC track power leads. It would not be the first time that we find some totally unrelated connection between distant places on the layout.

So let’s look at the Napa Yard:

Here’s what the panel looks like when we open it:

Upfront I can notice that the track power (orange wires) are separate from the turnout power (yellow wires). This is actually as it should be. So now “all” we have to do is follow the turnout wires. They are conveniently located under the layout and a bunch of things have been piled in front of them over the years, making access impossible. So first, I spent 10 minutes removing a cabinet, and before I could even do that I had to remove a couple unused DC equipment components:

So here’s a funny one: each time the Saturday operators use the Richmond Yard, the Mainline automation totally goes berserk and fails. Upon examining the logs from the automation computer, I noticed that some of the mountain blocks were seen as active even though there were no trains in the mountain. What’s going on here?

As a reminder: the automation uses current-sensing block sensors. A block is deemed occupied by a train if there is current flowing through that block. The sensors are located on the mountain panel, one per block.

The Richmond Yard and its panel. Mountain division is in the background.
They are not far away yet both should be totally isolated from each other.

This happened twice, and we narrowed it down to only two of the mountain blocks becoming active -- blocks B340 and B360 seen as active -- these are the ramp up and the curve before Summit on the Mountain. Basically the automation thinks there are trains at odd places and goes into error mode. Hilarity ensues. This happens when we have any train consuming power on the Richmond Yard. It’s enough for the trains to be sitting in the yard and not moving.

The yard panel has a power selector for “Cab 1”, “Cab 2”, and “Valley” DC input power. That’s a remnant of the DC power scheme of the layout and we don’t use anything but “Cab 1” for the DCC. To try to isolate things, in the terminal block behind the panel, I disconnected “Cab 2” and “Valley” since we don’t use them:

Orion finished the replacement of the T324 turnout that connects the Mainline to the Branchline.

Read this page for all the details and more pictures: 2024-08-21 - Randall Repairs: Turnout T324 on Branchline